Wonder why the country is in such a mess?

We need new labels to reflect real politics

We have clearly outgrown both of our most traditional political party labels, Democrat and Republican, and the cheap "conservative" and "liberal" tags attached to them.

None of it has any meaning anymore beyond crude description.

If you are in Congress, there has to be a way to identify you, so it might as well be U.S. Rep. Rip Skipper (R-Someplace) or U.S. Rep. Gorp Dinkie (D-Nowhere).

You might think, "Well, those Republicans, they sure are conservative," but I would argue that's not the case.

Conservatives are very careful about spending, about foreign entanglements, about restrictions on rights, about a whole raft of very American things. Also, they conserve.

But the Republicans who are in charge of everything in Washington have pumped up depressing deficits, expanded government spending all over the place, seem to embrace restrictions on all kinds of "rights" and just love pre-emptive foreign entanglements.

As for conservation, they spell it, "d-r-i-l-l-i-n-g."

So, the label is a fiction.

Barry Goldwater, now there was a conservative!

Ronald Reagan was conservative on taxes, but that was probably because he was miffed that so much of his movie-star money went to the federal government. Also, we liked him, so it didn't matter what he did.

William F. Buckley Jr. is a stellar conservative, a debater and writer well worth the time. But lots of the other folks who wear the conservative sweater these days just seem to be echoing one another and pumping out the party line.

It's sad that the conservative era arrived just as the nation was running out of conservatives.

I would say the same for liberals.

What we have instead of genuine ideological liberals, defenders of all liberal things, are whiny, cranky Democrats who seem intent on defining themselves this way: "I'm not George Bush. Hooray for me!"

I'm not George Bush either, but I'm not trying to build a political party on myself.

Hubert H. Humphrey was a liberal for a long time until the Vietnam War came along and cut him off at the knees. There were lots of Kennedy liberals too, although not as liberal as you might think, and besides, they were silenced before they could do much of anything.

Lyndon B. Johnson, ditto on the liberal philosophy, and sadly, ditto on Vietnam.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts is the liberal punching bag for many an opponent, but I am having trouble coming up with a paragraph to describe what he represents politically, other than opportunity lost and a dubious track record.

He is, indeed, shaped like a punching bag.

I would argue at year's end that nothing much applies anymore, even though talk radio and the babbling mob of blogging fanatics toss the words around as though they had genuine weight.

That is why, as we coast into a congressional election year that could deliver either the biggest surprise in modern political history, not much of anything or a lot more of the same (How's that for covering the bases?), I believe it's time for some new labels.

Corrupt would be a good label.

Not all politicians are corrupt, and it would be unfair to assume those who have been charged are guilty before they A. are convicted, or B. cop a plea.

But those who fit most handily into that group should become "Kleptublicans," a title that offers a deep bow to felonious acquisition of whatever they can get their hands on.

The Kleptublicans would hold their convention in Vegas. Anyone who attended would lose watches, wallets, credit cards, just about anything of any value. Despite this behavior, they would continue to be elected. The proof behind that assumption is that, even without the label, we continue to elect people who are thieves.

I would invent a special party for politicians who are so effective at telling lies.

I would call them Mendacicrats (that's men-dass-eye-crats), for their mendacities.

They would hold their convention in Washington because where else would you expect it to be held? Former President Bill Clinton, one of our most publicly mendacious presidents, would be the keynote speaker.

There would be hookers everywhere, but all the delegates would look deep into your eyes and say, "I did not have sex with that woman [or man], or that one or that one either!" whenever you wondered about what they were doing up there in the room.

Mendacicrats would promise the sky on matters like health care and education and deliver nothing, even while claiming they were working hard on health care and education.

They would always be able to argue that there might have been weapons of mass destruction someplace, or at least that some enemy was thinking about building them or that they had been spirited off to some mysterious hiding spot.

Marvelously, they would be re-elected, and we know this is true because, surprise, they already are, even without the label or the hookers or the weapons of mass destruction.

My own preference would be for a party called the Pragmaticrats, who would be politicians who announce, "Gawd, I don't know whether this is going to work at all but if it does, I'm going for it."

"We got it done!" would be their slogan.

We don't have any of these yet.

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Charles M. Madigan is the editor of Perspective and writes The Rambling Gleaner at chicagotribune.com/gleaner.